We will be interviewing author Douglas Clegg on ISIS Paranormal Radio on April 17 at 8 PM Eastern Time. Don’t Miss it!
Press Release:
For more information, please contact:
Elena Stokes, Wunderkind PR
T: 917.887.0784; elena@wunderkind-pr.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEVERLAND
by New York Times bestselling author DOUGLAS CLEGG
“Neverland is a masterpiece of dark suspense that will forever haunt your dreams.”
— Douglas Preston, New York Times bestselling author
“Clegg (The Vampyricon) crafts a haunting story redolent with the influence of Arthur Machen, H.P. Lovecraft, and other classic horror writers. His credible rendering of the internal lives of children and their imaginations give this flight of dark fancy a firm and frightening foothold in reality.” — Publishers Weekly
“Douglas Clegg . . . could have hung out with Robert R. McCammon, Bentley Little and Stephen King. These are guys who know America, and know how to literally scare up the best and worst aspects of the American character and slap them into a ripping yarn full of monsters, terror and enough action to keep the pages turning late into the night.”
— Rick Kleffel, book commentator for NPR
Douglas Clegg, New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the Shocker Award, returns this April with NEVERLAND (A Vanguard Press trade paperback original; on-sale: April 13, 2010; $15.95), a southern gothic tale of family secrets and childhood games gone awry.
Advance buzz is already building around NEVERLAND, with authors such as Bentley Little comparing it to the beloved novel To Kill a Mockingbird “as a classic modern novel that illuminates the human condition through the eyes of a child,” and New York Times bestselling author F. Paul Wilson hailing NEVERLAND as “a powerful and thrilling tale, Douglas Clegg’s best novel yet.”
Clegg, drawing on some of the events from his own life and a long-ago visit to an island much like Gull Island, brings us the story of a family vacation gone terribly wrong, a novel about the lies adults tell and the destruction they wreak on the innocents around them.
Says Clegg of writing NEVERLAND: “This novel, my favorite of anything I’ve written, is about absolute innocence embracing the wildness—and darkness—of the imagination. I was able to explore the destructive nature of family secrets, and how children sometimes create rituals of power as an escape from the world their parents have made.”
But imaginative games are not always innocent . . . and when Beau travels to the Retreat, his grandmother’s forbidding home on Gull Island off the Georgia coast line, resigned to a boring family vacation, he finds that his cousin, Sumter, has other plans.
Sumter has found a run-down shack hidden in the woods, a place “where you ain’t supposed to go,” a place forbidden to them that smells of socks, dead sea creatures—and dread; Sumter christens it Neverland.
Fascinated and terrified by Neverland but thrilled to have made a secret life for themselves in a shack full of old Playboys, smuggled beers, and forbidden words, Sumter and his cousins create a hallucinatory world of dark fantasy, a world ruled by a god of shadows, who Sumter calls “Lucy.”
But the shack is the key to a terrible secret, and the world the children create away from their parents, bound to each other by blood oaths, is anything but innocent. As tensions build at the Retreat and the adults start on their gin and tonics earlier each day, Sumter’s games begin to invoke a nightmarish presence that cannot be contained within the bounds of imagination any longer . . .
Featuring stunning interior illustrations by Glenn Chadbourne, illustrator of Stephen King’s Secretary of Dreams, NEVERLAND brings to mind author greats such as Ray Bradbury, Thomas Tryon, Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams as Clegg explores the darkness of man’s soul while giving us surprising glimpses into the complexities of the human heart . . .
Douglas Clegg is the New York Times bestselling author of Isis, The Priest of Blood, Afterlife, and The Hour Before Dark, among other novels. His short story collection, The Machinery of Night, won a Shocker Award; and his first collection, The Nightmare Chronicles, won both the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award.
NEVERLAND by Douglass Clegg
ISBN: 978-1-59315-541-4
ON-SALE: April 13, 2010
Contact: Elena Stokes
917-887-0784
elena@wunderkind-pr.com
A Vanguard Press trade paperback original, $15.95/352 pgs Partner and Founder, Wunderkind PR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Douglas Clegg is the New York Times bestselling author of Isis, The Priest of Blood, Afterlife, and The Hour Before Dark, among other novels. His short story collection, The Machinery of Night, won a Shocker Award, and his first collection, The Nightmare Chronicles, won both the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award. He lives with his husband, Raul, in New England, with a small menagerie of rescued animals.
Visit Douglas Clegg at www.DouglasClegg.com
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Glenn Chadbourne is an award-winning editorial cartoonist for The Lincoln County News (Maine) as well as a muralist and painter. In addition to Isis and Neverland, he illustrated Stephen King’s Secretary of Dreams and Colorado Kid, and created the logo character “Doug E Graves” for King’s rock ‘n roll radio station, WKIT. Chadbourne’s creation was featured in the movie The Mist. He lives on the coast of Maine.
Visit Glenn Chadbourne at www.GlennChadbourne.com
Be sure to check out the author’s website at www.douglasclegg.com to join the special Neverland contest and for the chance at the Grand Prize of either a Kindle or a Nook. You’ll also be able to check out exclusive, limited-time ebooks, and special bonus content including upcoming goodies such as a special videogame and a cinematic trailer!
